British teenager killed in Syrian battle

A British teenager and nephew of a former Guantanamo Bay inmate has been killed in Syria. His father, who found out about his son’s death via Facebook, revealed Friday that two of his other sons have also gone to fight in the conflict.

Eighteen-year-old Abdullah Deghayes left Britain in January and
died earlier this month. His father, Abubaker Degayes, told
reporters outside his home in Brighton, England that his other
son, Amer, was wounded by a bullet to the stomach in the same
battle.

“He was killed in a battle, as far as I know. His brother,
who is also there, is injured. The third brother who is also
there is OK. He is fine,” said Abubaker.

Abubaker said he never encouraged his children to go to Syria,
but thinks of Abdullah as a martyr.

“I never encouraged them, nor anybody, as far as I know, who
is around them encouraged them, They went of their own free will.
Of course I think, as a Muslim, that my son is a martyr. Anyone
who dies for a just cause is a martyr,” he said.

He said his son became adamant about going to Syria after seeing
videos of Assad’s atrocities online and had gone there to help
“those who are weak.” He stressed that neither Abdullah
nor his brothers are “terrorists.”

Abubaker said he had travelled to Turkey earlier this year to
meet two of his sons, Abdullah and 16-year-old Jafar, in an
unsuccessful attempt to stop them from going to fight in Syria.

Abdullah’s Uncle, Omar Deghayes, was held by the US at Guantanamo
Bay from 2002-2007, after being arrested in Pakistan. Speaking
from Tripoli, Libya, Omar said that Abdullah was a young man full
of life.

“He had a bright future ahead, he was just like any
18-year-old, but his heart was different. He couldn’t sit still
watching the news of the gross injustice taking place in Syria.
He felt he needed to do more,” Omar said, as quoted by
British media.

Pictures of Abdullah on Facebook show a British teenager spending
time with male and female friends, some of whom are drinking
beer. He worked in a sports shop and was due to begin his studies
at the University of Brighton.

“We were in a really tight group of friends together and we
all went for a carvery a while back as we knew he was going away.
We thought it was Libya where he often went to see friends. He
never mentioned Syria before – never,” said Louise Tierney,
one of Abdullah’s close friends, as quoted by British media.

Around 400 British nationals are believed to have traveled to
Syria in the past two years, approximately 20 of whom have died.
Authorities believe 250 of those have now returned to the UK.

Interpol searching for Austrian teen jihadists in Syria

Authorities in Austria believe that two teenage girls who
vanished from their homes in Vienna on April 10 may have been
tricked into going to Syria to fight for the Islamic rebels.

The first hints of where Samra Kesinovic, 16, and Sabina
Selimovic, 15, went were a number of social media posts claiming
the girls had gone to fight a “holy war.”

The girl’s parents told the Dnevni Avaz (Daily Voice), a
newspaper in Bosnia and Herzegovina, that the pair had left
behind letters in which they said they were going to Syria to
fight for Islam.

Sabina Selimovic’s father said she had left a letter hidden in
her books which read, “We’re going to fight for Islam. See
you in Jannah, there is good, there is the eternal world.”

New photos on their Facebook pages show them holding Kalashnikov
automatic rifles, and in some cases they are surrounded by armed
men. In their latest post, they said they were going to get
married so they could become “holy warriors,” according
to the Daily Mail.

Austrian officials believe the girls are in a training camp and
are already married and living in the homes of their new
husbands.

It is believed the girls arrived in Adana, Turkey on Thursday,
which is about 100 km from the Syrian border, according to the
Dnevni Avaz. The parents of the girls say they don’t believe the
Facebook messages are being written by their daughters, but
admitted they had recently started going to a local mosque run by
a radical Imam, Ebu Tejma.

The girls come from Bosnia refugee families who settled in
Austria after the war in the 1990s, but both were born in
Austria.